


Lay Down In the Tall Grass

by therev



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6170596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Branch always knew he'd never follow in his daddy's footsteps. Sometimes it surprised him how often he followed Walt's. Small scenes from Branch's life during the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Down In the Tall Grass

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through season 3. I've never read the books. I made some stuff up. Title is a song by Timber Timbre.

The storm wasn't so much coming as it had come and was looking to stay a while and Branch was already standing ankle-deep in fresh snow at the trailhead. 

"It is not too late to change your mind," Henry said, shouting a little over the wind, then swung up onto the horse he'd brought for himself, reaching out for the lead rope that Branch held, the horse he'd intended for Walt. "I can lead her from here. I am sure your bed is a lot warmer at this time of night than those mountains."

Branch looked up, out into the falling snow and cloud cover that obscured what the dark did not. He unsnapped the lead and threw it over the gate of Henry's horse trailer and swung up, shook the snow off of his pantslegs and nodded toward the trail."Right behind you, Standing Bear."

Henry made a face, but if it was disapproval or not Branch couldn't tell, and then Henry pointed at the snow-covered ground out ahead of them. "These look like foot tracks but those are definitely from a snow cat and they'll be easier to follow. Walt would have followed them too so keep an eye out."

"What the hell was he thinking?" Branch asked, more to himself than Henry.

"He was thinking those tracks will be gone by morning in this storm, and we have the same concern, so like I said, keep an eye out."

Something moved overhead and Branch looked to the sky to spot it. It wasn't so much a sound since they wouldn't have heard it anyway, as a shift of light, wings blotting out the gauzy glow of the moon through wind and snow. Henry was looking up too, then at Branch, as if this portended something he was too white to understand, then Henry touched his heels to his horse and started up the trail and Branch pulled his coat a little tighter and followed.

That morning Branch had woken early, 4am, and went down to the news station in a shirt with pearl snaps and a jacket like his daddy wore and stood in front of a blue screen and tried to convince himself and the rest of Absaroka County that he was the man to replace Walt Longmire. The storm had been just a threat then and the prisoner transfer that Vic and Walt had scheduled had held less concern than the impending white-out.

Less than twenty-four hours later he was chasing Walt up a mountainside, flanking Walt's best friend, riding Walt's horse, following the powdered white path that Walt had left for them. Branch never thought he'd follow in his father's footsteps, but sometimes it surprised him how often he followed Walt Longmire's instead.  
___

"Bad timing," Cady said, and touched his cheek like it still meant something when she was all but walking away.

"Is this how you ask me not to run against your father?" he said.

It wasn't really a joke but he smiled. She frowned and took her hand away and stood by her window in the yellowed early morning light, body outlined through the sheet she wore, and didn't say anything else except goodbye and take care and see you around.

Her garden was blooming when he stood in it days later, purple lupine and yellow poppies, goldenrod and prairie flax nestled under rabbitbrush. She had just told him about her mother. He knew his own only through distant memories, expensive perfume and soft fabrics. He tried to imagine living his whole life with that presence, then losing it abruptly. He thought he could imagine that.

He tugged at yellow flowers and considered them, then turned to look back where Cady had kissed his cheek goodbye on the doorstep, to tip his hat, to keep something between them that wasn't peculiar, but she was no longer standing in the door watching him, and the curtains in the windows were drawn closed.

On the way to the office he thought that it put a real strain on a person, being involved with Longmires of any sort, in any capacity.  
___

When he was a kid he'd play cowboys and indians with boys from school. One by one they'd each play the indian as the others chased them down, tied them up, took their horses. Except for Branch. Branch was never, ever the indian. It wasn't that he had some sense of political correctness at the tender age of eight, but mostly that his daddy wouldn't have liked it.

As he stood on the edge of an arroyo, about to sift white ash from red dust, the dog soldier came at him in a flash of sunlight, black feathers and ash-caked skin, soft leather, softer hair and hot metal. Hours later, Walt came in hurried bootfalls over scattered rock, a familiar shadow under an old hat and even older blue sky. The pain in his belly made him feel bigger than himself, bigger than the mountain range, and Walt digging into him, closing up the wound, only spread him out further, to touch the canyon below, the sky above. Maybe, he thought later, that had been the peyote. Maybe, he thought much later, that had just been how Walt made people feel sometimes.  
___

"You look like hell and back, nephew," Lucian said to him, sitting across the table, pouring more syrup on his pancakes than a man his age probably should. 

"Good to see you, too," Branch said and nodded to the waitress for another cup of coffee and squared up his hat on the seat beside him. 

"Not that I'm complaining to get busted out of the old folks prison but haven't you got anything better to do?"

"I need your help with something," Branch said.

"The hell you say," Lucian said loudly, always louder than his daddy, but somehow less mean about it, and frowned in his way that was really a smile. 

"How do you know when you're losing it?"

Lucian squinted at him more than usual.

"And who says I've lost it?"

"Your doctors," Branch said.

Lucian laughed. "You mean your daddy," he said, and ate a forkful of pancake. "That wiley coyote. Why is it nobody ever sees a snake in the grass 'til they're bit?"

"Forget I asked."

"Now how am I supposed to do that? You think I'm crazy and what's more you think your daddy's saner than me. Why? Because he's younger? Because I've led an interesting life?"

"I figured it was because of the poetry."

Lucian did grin then, and stabbed at a sausage. "Why you asking anyway, son? I know getting shot ain't the easiest but it was your belly not your brain."

Branch leaned forward, the pain in his stomach a reminder that Lucian didn't have to voice. "There's this indian," he said.

"Out in these parts, it's always an indian or a woman." Lucian paused and looked thoughtful. "Or both," he added.

"It's not like that. They say he's dead, that he was dead before he shot me."

The waitress came and filled their cups and eyed them both too long, pouring too slowly. Lucian smiled up at her and she left.

"You talkin' about ghosts, nephew?"

"I'm talking about lies, uncle."

Lucian leaned back like he might say something profound. He lifted his cup. "Sometimes they're the same thing."

Branch shook his head and leaned back. "Anyway, I need information. I think I know how to get it."

"But it ain't strictly legal?" Lucian asked, tucking back into his breakfast. "Not up to Walter Longmire standard, I reckon."

"It's not."

The diner went silent and Lucian dug into his pocket, slid a few quarters across the table and asked Branch to go play 'Walking the Floor Over You'.

"What you need," Lucian said when Branch slid carefully back into the booth, "is a patsy."  
___

In a hunting cabin on the lake where Branch learned to swim, Branch poured the contents of a thermos down Sam Poteet's throat as Sam spat and gurgled and struggled against rope and the mean cut of a seatbelt strap and Branch began to wonder if he was still the cowboy.  
___

When Branch was still in highschool, Walt came to their home to talk to his daddy, younger then but just as tall, maybe taller. Walt had a gun on his hip and a hat on his head and although his daddy had a room full of rifles and shotguns there was something memorable about that particular sidearm peeking out from an old, worn canvas coat. No one had ever accused Branch of looking like his father, but no one had ever talked much about his mother either, until Walt looked down at him, quirked his mouth in a muted smile and told him he sure did favor his mother, and slipped that hat off his head like she was in the room with them.

Prior to that day, Branch had wanted to be a veterinarian. Not really, he just knew it riled his old man to think of his only son being so useful or compassionate, or smelling like horse manure and dogs rather than English Leather and Marlboros. But Sheriff Walt Longmire did a better job of riling his father than any man Branch had ever met besides his uncle, the old sheriff, and a new career path was born.

For weeks, Branch dreamed of that hat and cool, low voice, that sidearm and coat and worn ropers. The day he graduated, Walt pulled him over for speeding in his brand new truck, and Branch watched in the side mirror as Walt approached, his long stride eating up the asphalt under his bootheels like it was poured there for him to walk on.

"Graduation present?" Walt asked.

"Yessir."

"You want to keep it in one piece longer than a day, don't you?"

Branch nodded and Walt considered the horizon, handed back his license which he hadn't even looked at and told him to be careful and to slow down, told him he wanted to see him at the graduation ceremony that night.

Branch did see him that night. Walt shook his hand standing next to Mrs. Longmire. She had taught him Literature in his junior year. They had read part of Moby Dick and she had said that Captain Ahab sometimes reminded her of their sheriff, her husband, but Branch couldn't imagine what she meant at the time.  
___

The cell walls weren't cold. Branch didn't know why he'd ever imagined they'd be any colder on that side of the office than anywhere else in the room. He could hear Ferg on the phone but all he saw was the sparkle of the river and the untroubled current as he shot into it, David Ridges' face floating pale and wet, like he might have been dead, like he might have been a ghost after all. 

The room in his daddy's house wasn't cold either, even after the door was locked and he was alone. He was used to that, especially in that house. But somehow his father's prison was worse than Walt's. Staying in that place with his father was a deader end than rotting in prison, than facing David Ridges or running until all the breath and blood and sense had gone of out him.

Walt found him on the road to Horse Creek, and in the back of his truck Walt showed him the truth. Branch hadn't realized until then how much he had doubted himself, but a body was a body, and it was cold to the touch. 

"I'm not glad he's dead," Branch said on the way back to town, Walt's hat on the seat between them like a barrier. "I know you probably think I am. I know you think I wanted revenge. It wasn't ever just revenge."

Walt was quiet. Walt was usually quiet, but this was harder. 

"I'm not glad he's dead," Branch repeated, "but I'm not sorry either."

"I doubted you," Walt said after a long time, still watching the road. "I shouldn't have."

In the back of the truck, black feathers shivered in the wind through the open windows, the breeze coming up out of the canyon and onto the road and into the cab, the smell of lavender and dry earth and the blood on Walt's coat. 

"I shouldn't have done a lot of things," Branch said.

"You wouldn't have had to, had I backed you up."

"I probably would have done them anyway."

Walt turned to look at him. Just for a moment, a little longer than a glance, but Branch felt bared by it, magnified, like that afternoon on the ridge with a bullet in his belly and the sun overhead and Walt's hands slick with his blood.

Walt watched the road.

"Thank you," Branch said, or tried to say, but it caught in his throat, too brittle to be heard.  
____

In a dream, Walt met him in a field, face obscured by the sun, towering over him, so tall and dark and far away. Then, on horseback, they rode along the edge of an arroyo and down into the valley, rocks and scrub brush scattering under their horses' hooves, and in a riverbed they dismounted and washed in the pink dusk, Walt bareheaded and grinning until the sun set and by a fire they spoke softly into the night.

Sometimes in the dream, Walt reached inside him and pulled out a crow and the crow would flap its blood-wet wings, turning circles in the dirt until Walt took it up again and rinsed it in the river and it flew out to meet the sun rising red and huge from behind the mountains.

Sometimes David Ridges killed Walt and then Branch and their horses and left them on the river banks to rot slowly into dust.

Sometimes it was snowing and Branch looked down at Walt on horseback, leading a second horse behind him though no one was around and the night was growing darker. Still Walt climbed higher with that horse in tow and Branch would call out but Walt never heard him and never stopped, even until morning, even until Branch woke in the dark and the cold, sweating, hoarse and hungry.  
___

No one had ever accused Branch of looking like his father, but everyone had said he was just as stubborn. Branch had always known he'd never follow in his father's footsteps but he had begun to understand he'd follow Walt's just about anywhere, whether or not he intended to. So it happened that the one case Walt couldn't solve was the one that Branch could.

In a field, not a dream, he stood with his father. It was a clay pigeon, not a crow, and his father had no comfort for him. His father never had. The thrower whirled, the pigeon flew, and the tall grass whispered against their pantslegs.

No one ever sees the snake in the grass 'til they're bit, he thought. It wasn't the last thing he thought, but there was little more after that.  
___

In a dream, Walt found Branch in a riverbed, picking stones out of the water, the smoothest, the reddest, the whitest. He placed them in a line on the bank and stood back and held his hat against his chest and grinned that grin a hundred girls had fell victim to at one time or another. 

Walt stepped closer, curious, toed at the rocks in the wet, red earth. 

"What's this about?" he asked Branch and Branch placed his hat back on his head carefully, pushed it back a bit and then said,

"Catch."

The stone, when Walt caught it, was black and glass-smooth. He turned it in his hand. At the right angle, it reflected the sky.

"Thanks," Branch said.

"For what?" Walt asked, but when he looked up he was alone, and then he was awake, the ghost of something warm in his hand.


End file.
